Being an "ass": An Early Bronze Age burial of a donkey from Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel

Burials of domestic asses appear in the Early Bronze Age (EBA) of the Near East, yet there is little understanding of the nature and importance of such burials. Usually, they are treated relatively simplistically as the remains of adored pets (if carefully interred) or sick animals who have lost their usefulness (e.g. as beasts of burden). Also, the relationship between the burials and the surrounding deposits and structures is rarely clear (e.g. were they buried in an abandoned area of sites or purposely buried beneath floors). In this paper, we discuss the excavation and analytical results of the burial of an ass found under the floor of an EB III house at the site of Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel. By integrating the results of zooarchaeological, architectural, stratigraphic, and typochronological analyses to this bioarchaeological deposit, it is clear that the ass was deliberately bound, slaughtered and buried as a foundation deposit under the EB III house. The importance of this taxon to the religious and economic realms of the EBA of the Near East is discussed. If this approach is applied to the other ass burials dispersed across the region, their significance is clarified.